All That Remains
by CityGirl1218
Summary: Bella returns to Forks many years in the future and reflects on what could have been


AN:This takes place after Eclipse and part of Breaking Dawn. Edward and Bella have married, but she did not get pregnant with Renesmee. Carlisle and Edward have changed Bella into a vampire and they have all moved from Forks.

* * *

Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight, or the character, I'm just borrowing them

* * *

Forks, Washington 2117

It had been years, over a hundred since she had driven through these streets. Her car nearly silent on the rough paved roads. Forks had been hard to find on a map when she lived here. Now, the small town had collapsed, nearly desolate. She knew no one who called this town home. Things had changed, decayed, really. She passed by landmarks that had been abandoned, dusty memories that almost came to mind. The diner, she could recall dinners there with her Father and his favorite berry cobbler. Forks High School and the memory of a van and icy pavement. The clinic where Carlisle had worked, and had patched up her fragile human form. All of these things bitter sweet. She knew she came back to seek the ghosts of yesterday. Trying to grasp one last time the old memories.

So much had changed, except her. She looked the same as when she had left all those years before. The blushing bride of Edward Cullen. She no longer blushed. Her pale icy skin unchanging, never more to betray her inner most thoughts.

Charlie had passed away at the age of 72. She was not allowed to return to say good-bye to him. It had become a point of contention between herself and Edward. A hardness that grew into a wall, a wall that had destroyed her marriage. She had left Edward, walked away from him and the Cullens. It had been easy once she made her mind up. She had been on her own for thirty-seven years. Longer than her human life.

She pulled the car onto the shoulder in front of a weathered old home. It was the one she had shared with her father. The house she called home during those tumultuous few years. Time had not been kind to the house. It had been abandoned some twenty years before, around the same time the police force had been dis-banned. Charlie had left the house to the City of Forks as a residence for the chief of police.

She slowly reached for the handle of the door releasing the lever and easing the door open. It was a cloudy over cast day, typical weather for Forks. She knew it wasn't necessary, but she had worn large sunglasses and a carefully wrapped scarf. It was a habit that she had picked up from Alice. As she alighted from her vehicle, she took a deep breath, not because she needed air, but to take in the scents around her. She could smell the forest, and with it the memories that it triggered. A meadow and the once upon a time heart break that came with it.

She straighted and slowly made her way across the street to the gravel drive way. She could move faster that the human eye could see, but she often felt it unnecessary to. She much preferred to gracefully stroll, a throw back to her human days when she would trip over her own feet. The only sound she could hear was the crunching of her own feet on the rocky ground, the woods were silent.

She approached the porch, climbed the broken, rotted stairs and pushed open the door. She had expected changes. She was not prepared for the memories that assaulted her when she opened the door. She could smell the dust and the decay of the house, but underneath that she could smell the faint whiff of home. The smell of Charlie and human Bella, of woodsy cologne, and flower scented shampoo. For the first time in a long time she grieved, she, in her vampire body, felt pain. Her heart that had beat it's last beat a century ago, ached.

She walked through the decimated rooms, ravaged by time and weather. She stood in her old bedroom, gazing out the window, remembering the visitors who entered through there. She thought of icy kisses and warm embraces, she thought of the moon, and of the sun. Her sun.

She made her way back down to her car, taking nothing with her and leaving nothing behind. This place no longer belonged to her. This was the place of the warm and laughing, the heart-breaking lovely human girl who resided there long ago.

She started the engine and pulled back on the street, knowing she had one more stop to make.


End file.
